First liquid-fueled rocket - Mar 16, 1926 - HISTORY.com Publisher A+E Networks The first man to give hope to dreams of space travel is American Robert H. Goddard, who successfully launches the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket at Auburn, Massachusetts, on March 16, 1926. The rocket traveled for 2.5 seconds at a speed of about 60 mph, reaching an altitude of 41 feet and landing 184 feet away. The rocket was 10 feet tall, constructed out of thin pipes, and was fueled by liquid oxygen and gasoline. The Chinese developed the first military rockets in the early 13th century using gunpowder and probably built firework rockets at an earlier date. Gunpowder-propelled military rockets appeared in Europe sometime in the 13th century, and in the 19th century British engineers made several important advances in early rocket science. In 1903, an obscure Russian inventor named Konstantin E.

Tsiolkovsky published a treatise on the theoretical problems of using rocket engines in space, but it was not until Robert Goddard’s work in the 1920s that anyone began to build the modern, liquid-fueled type of rocket that by the early 1960s would be launching humans into space. Goddard, born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1882, became fascinated with the idea of space travel after reading the H.G. Wells’ science fiction novel War of the Worlds in 1898. He began building gunpowder rockets in 1907 while a student at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and continued his rocket experiments as a physics doctoral student and then physics professor at Clark University. He was the first to prove that rockets can propel in an airless vacuum-like space and was also the first to explore mathematically the energy and thrust potential of various fuels, including liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. He received U.S. patents for his concepts of a multistage rocket and a liquid-fueled rocket, and secured grants from the Smithsonian Institute to continue his research.

In 1919, his classic treatise A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes was published by the Smithsonian. The work outlined his mathematical theories of rocket propulsion and proposed the future launching of an unmanned rocket to the moon. The press picked up on Goddard’s moon-rocket proposal and for the most part ridiculed the scientist’s innovative ideas. In January 1920, The New York Times printed an editorial declaring that Dr. Goddard “seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools” because he thought that rocket thrust would be effective beyond the earth’s atmosphere. (Three days before the first Apollo lunar-landing mission in July 1969, the Times printed a correction to this editorial.) In December 1925, Goddard tested a liquid-fueled rocket in the physics building at Clark University. He wrote that the rocket, which was secured in a static rack, “operated satisfactorily and lifted its own weight.” On March 16, 1926, Goddard accomplished the world’s first launching of a liquid-fueled rocket from his Aunt Effie’s farm in Auburn.

Goddard continued his innovative rocket work until his death in 1945. His work was recognized by the aviator Charles A. Lindbergh, who helped secure him a grant from the Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics. Using these funds, Goddard set up a testing ground in Roswell, New Mexico, which operated from 1930 until 1942. During his tenure there, he made 31 successful flights, including one of a rocket that reached 1.7 miles off the ground in 22.3 seconds. Meanwhile, while Goddard conducted his limited tests without official U.S. support, Germany took the initiative in rocket development and by September 1944 was launching its V-2 guided missiles against Britain to devastating effect. During the war, Goddard worked in developing a jet-thrust booster for a U.S. Navy seaplane. He would not live to see the major advances in rocketry in the 1950s and ’60s that would make his dreams of space travel a reality. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is named in his honor.

Related Videos Brief History of Rockets + Contact Glenn Brief History of Rockets Today's rockets are remarkable collections of human ingenuity that have their roots in the science and technology of the past. They are natural outgrowths of literally thousands of years of experimentation and research on rockets and rocket propulsion. One of the first devices to successfully employ the principles essential to rocket flight was a wooden bird. The writings of Aulus Gellius, a Roman, tell a story of a Greek named Archytas who lived in the city of Tarentum, now a part of southern Italy. Somewhere around the year 400 B.C., Archytas mystified and amused the citizens of Tarentum by flying a pigeon made of wood. Escaping steam propelled the bird suspended on wires. The pigeon used the action-reaction principle, which was not stated as a scientific law until the 17th century. About three hundred years after the pigeon, another Greek, Hero of Alexandria, invented a similar rocket-like device called an aeolipile. It, too, used steam as a propulsive gas. Hero mounted a sphere on top of a water kettle. A fire below the kettle turned the water into steam, and the gas traveled through pipes to the sphere.

Two L-shaped tubes on opposite sides of the sphere allowed the gas to escape, and in doing so gave a thrust to the sphere that caused it to rotate. Just when the first true rockets appeared is unclear. Stories of early rocket like devices appear sporadically through the historical records of various cultures. Perhaps the first true rockets were accidents. In the first century A.D., the Chinese reportedly had a simple form of gunpowder made from saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal dust. To create explosions during religous festivals, they filled bamboo tubes with a mixture and tossed them into fires. Perhaps some of those tubes failed to explode and instead skittered out of the fires, propelled by the gases and sparks produced by the burning gunpowder. The Chinese began experimenting with the gunpowder-filled tubes. At some point, they attached bamboo tubes to arrows and launched them with bows. Soon they discovered that these gunpowder tubes could launch themselves just by the power produced from the escaping gas. The true rocket was born. The date reporting the first use of true rockets was in 1232. At this time, the Chinese and the Mongols were at war with each other.

During the battle of Kai-Keng, the Chinese repelled the Mongol invaders by a barrage of "arrows of flying fire." These fire-arrows were a simple form of a solid-propellant rocket. A tube, capped at one end, contained gunpowder. The other end was left open and the tube was attached to a long stick. When the powder was ignited, the rapid burning of the powder produced fire, smoke, and gas that escaped out the open end and produced a thrust. The stick acted as a simple guidance system that kept the rocket headed in one general direction as it flew through the air. It is not clear how effective these arrows of flying fire were as weapons of destruction, but their psychological effects on the Mongols must have been formidable. Following the battle of Kai-Keng, the Mongols produced rockets of their own and may have been responsible for the spread of rockets to Europe. All through the 13th to the 15th centuries there were reports of many rocket experiments. In England, a monk named Roger Bacon worked on improved forms of gunpowder that greatly increased the range of rockets. In France, Jean Froissart found that more accurate flights could be achieved by launching rockets through tubes.

Froissart's idea was the forerunner of the modern bazooka. Joanes de Fontana of Italy designed a surface-running rocket-powered torpedo for setting enemy ships on fire. By the 16th century rockets fell into a time of disuse as weapons of war, though they were still used for fireworks displays, and a German fireworks maker, Johann Schmidlap, invented the "step rocket," a multi-staged vehicle for lifting fireworks to higher altitudes. A large sky rocket (first stage) carried a smaller sky rocket (second stage). When the large rocket burned out, the smaller one continued to a higher altitude before showering the sky with glowing cinders. Schmidlap's idea is basic to all rockets today that go into outer space. Nearly all uses of rockets up to this time were for warfare or fireworks, but there is an interesting old Chinese legend that reported the use of rockets as a means of transportation. With the help of many assistants, a lesser-known Chinese official named Wan-Hu assembled a rocket- powered flying chair. Attached to the chair were two large kites, and fixed to the kites were forty- seven fire-arrow rockets.

On the day of the flight, Wan-Hu sat himself on the chair and gave the command to light the rockets. Forty-seven rocket assistants, each armed with torches, rushed forward to light the fuses. In a moment, there was a tremendous roar accompanied by billowing clouds of smoke. When the smoke cleared, Wan-Hu and his flying chair were gone. No one knows for sure what happened to Wan-Hu, but it is probable that if the event really did take place, Wan-Hu and his chair were blown to pieces. Fire-arrows were as apt to explode as to fly. Rocketry Becomes a Science During the latter part of the 17th century, the scientific foundations for modern rocketry were laid by the great English scientist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). Newton organized his understanding of physical motion into three scientific laws. The laws explain how rockets work and why they are able to work in the vacuum of outer space. Newton's laws soon began to have a practical impact on the design of rockets. About 1720, a Dutch professor, Willem Gravesande, built model cars propelled by jets of steam.

Rocket experimenters in Germany and Russia began working with rockets with a mass of more than 45 kilograms. Some of these rockets were so powerful that their escaping exhaust flames bored deep holes in the ground even before lift-off. During the end of the 18th century and early into the 19th, rockets experienced a brief revival as a weapon of war. The success of Indian rocket barrages against the British in 1792 and again in 1799 caught the interest of an artillery expert, Colonel William Congreve. Congreve set out to design rockets for use by the British military. The Congreve rockets were highly successful in battle. Used by British ships to pound Fort McHenry in the War of 1812, they inspired Francis Scott Key to write "the rockets' red glare," words in his poem that later became The Star- Spangled Banner. Even with Congreve's work, the accuracy of rockets still had not improved much from the early days. The devastating nature of war rockets was not their accuracy or power, but their numbers. During a typical siege, thousands of them might be fired at the enemy. All over the world, rocket researchers experimented with ways to improve accuracy.

An Englishman, William Hale, developed a technique called spin stabilization. In this method, the escaping exhaust gases struck small vanes at the bottom of the rocket, causing it to spin much as a bullet does in flight. Variations of the principle are still used today. Rockets continued to be used with success in battles all over the European continent. However, in a war with Prussia, the Austrian rocket brigades met their match against newly designed artillery pieces. Breech-loading cannon with rifled barrels and exploding warheads were far more effective weapons of war than the best rockets. Once again, rockets were relegated to peacetime uses. Modern Rocketry Begins In 1898, a Russian schoolteacher, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), proposed the idea of space exploration by rocket. In a report he published in 1903, Tsiolkovsky suggested the use of liquid propellants for rockets in order to achieve greater range. Tsiolkovsky stated that the speed and range of a rocket were limited only by the exhaust velocity of escaping gases. For his ideas, careful research, and great vision, Tsiolkovsky has been called the father of modern astronautics.

Early in the 20th century, an American, Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945), conducted practical experiments in rocketry. He had become interested in a way of achieving higher altitudes than were possible for lighter-than-air balloons. He published a pamphlet in 1919 entitled A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. It was a mathematical analysis of what is today called the meteorological sounding rocket. Goddard's earliest experiments were with solid-propellant rockets. In 1915, he began to try various types of solid fuels and to measure the exhaust velocities of the burning gases. While working on solid-propellant rockets, Goddard became convinced that a rocket could be propelled better by liquid fuel. No one had ever built a successful liquid-propellant rocket before. It was a much more difficult task than building solid- propellant rockets. Fuel and oxygen tanks, turbines, and combustion chambers would be needed. In spite of the difficulties, Goddard achieved the first successful flight with a liquid- propellant rocket on March 16, 1926.

Fueled by liquid oxygen and gasoline, the rocket flew for only two and a half seconds, climbed 12.5 meters, and landed 56 meters away in a cabbage patch. By today's standards, the flight was unimpressive, but like the first powered airplane flight by the Wright brothers in 1903, Goddard's gasoline rocket was the forerunner of a whole new era in rocket flight. Goddard's experiments in liquid-propellant rockets continued for many years. His rockets became bigger and flew higher. He developed a gyroscope system for flight control and a payload compartment for scientific instruments. Parachute recovery systems were employed to return rockets and instruments safely. Goddard, for his achievements, has been called the father of modern rocketry. A third great space pioneer, Hermann Oberth (1894-1989) born on June 25, 1894 in Hermannstadt (Transylvania), and died on December 28, 1989 in Nuremberg, Germany, published a book in 1923 about rocket travel into outer space. His writings were important.

Because of them, many small rocket societies sprang up around the world. In Germany, the formation of one such society, the Verein fur Raumschiffahrt (Society for Space Travel), led to the development of the V-2 rocket, which was used against London during World War II. In 1937, German engineers and scientists, including Oberth, assembled in Peenemunde on the shores of the Baltic Sea. There the most advanced rocket of its time would be built and flown under the directorship of Wernher von Braun. The V-2 rocket (in Germany called the A-4) was small by comparison to today's rockets. It achieved its great thrust by burning a mixture of liquid oxygen and alcohol at a rate of about one ton every seven seconds. Once launched, the V-2 was a formidable weapon that could devastate whole city blocks. Fortunately for London and the Allied forces, the V-2 came too late in the war to change its outcome. Nevertheless, by war's end, German rocket scientists and engineers had already laid plans for advanced missiles capable of spanning the Atlantic Ocean and landing in the United States. These missiles would have had winged upper stages but very small payload capacities.

With the fall of Germany, many unused V-2 rockets and components were captured by the Allies. Many German rocket scientists came to the United States. Others went to the Soviet Union. The German scientists, including Wernher von Braun, were amazed at the progress Goddard had made. Both the United States and the Soviet Union realized the potential of rocketry as a military weapon and began a variety of experimental programs. At first, the United States began a program with high-altitude atmospheric sounding rockets, one of Goddard's early ideas. Later, a variety of medium- and long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles were developed. These became the starting point of the U.S. space program. Missiles such as the Redstone, Atlas, and Titan would eventually launch astronauts into space. On October 4, 1957, the world was stunned by the news of an Earth-orbiting artificial satellite launched by the Soviet Union. Called Sputnik I, the satellite was the first successful entry in a race for space between the two superpower nations. Less than a month later, the Soviets followed with the launch of a satellite carrying a dog named Laika on board.

Laika survived in space for seven days before being put to sleep before the oxygen supply ran out. A few months after the first Sputnik, the United States followed the Soviet Union with a satellite of its own. Explorer I was launched by the U.S. Army on January 31, 1958. In October of that year, the United States formally organized its space program by creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA became a civilian agency with the goal of peaceful exploration of space for the benefit of all humankind. Soon, many people and machines were being launched into space. Astronauts orbited Earth and landed on the Moon. Robot spacecraft traveled to the planets. Space was suddenly opened up to exploration and commercial exploitation. Satellites enabled scientists to investigate our world, forecast the weather, and to communicate instantaneously around the globe. As the demand for more and larger payloads increased, a wide array of powerful and versatile rockets had to be built. Since the earliest days of discovery and experimentation, rockets have evolved from simple gunpowder devices into giant vehicles capable of traveling into outer space. Rockets have opened the universe to direct exploration by humankind.

First Rocket - Universe Today Universe Today by Tega Jessa [/caption] Rocketry is actually older than many people think. The first rockets originated in China and subsequently the Middle East with the discovery of gunpowder. These rockets were used for military purposes or as entertainment. The use of rockets and gunpowder would eventually transform warfare, and to this day we still use rockets in pretty much the same way they were used 700 years ago. The only difference is that when we use rockets for military purposes we call them missiles and when used for entertainment they can be toys or pyrotechnics. The composition of the first rocket was what is now in aeronautics called a solid rocket. This rocket runs on a solid fuel that burned inside the rocket. The heated exhaust is expelled out the bottom the rocket, creating the thrust needed to fly. The composition of solid fuel rockets is still pretty much the same as in ancient times. The casing is the body of the rocket. Rockets were made differently depending upon their end use. For example, solid rockets that were used in space programs had steel casings. The next important element of a solid rocket was the grain. The grain is the solid fuel needed to power the missile.

The first types used had gunpowder as the grain but the formula could be altered. If you ever saw a fireworks display, this is why the explosions have different colors. The additions of different metals and composites in the grain of the rockets creates this effect. The final components; the fuse. This was the ignition device used to start the combustion process of the rockets fuel. Later as rocketry was further researched a nozzle was added to the design to better direct exhaust and improve thrust. The first rockets that were used in modern rocketry was invented by Dr. Robert Goddard. For this he is known as the Father of Modern Rocketry. He created the first successful liquid fuel rocket, adding the nozzle design that is so common today. The liquid fuel rocket ran on a slightly different design than its predecessor with the fuel being released from a pressure tank to a combustion chamber where it was mixed with air or another oxidizer to burn and create heated exhaust which was directed away to create thrust. This would be the design that would pave the way for modern aeronautics and eventually space exploration. So as we see rockets have come a long way from their earliest day. Nevertheless, they are still playing an important role in the development of human technology.

Making new advances possible every day with the missions and experiments they support. If you enjoyed this article there are other related articles on the Universe Today website you might want to checkout. Here is an article that talks more about solid fuel rockets. If you want to learn more about modern rockets this article on new advances made on liquid fuel rockets . There are other interesting articles you can find on the web. Time magazine has a great profile article on Robert Goddard. Another good resource is the NASA website which has a brief article on the history of rockets. You might also enjoy listening to an episode of Astronomy Cast. Episode 100 Rockets is relevant to the stuff talked about in the article. Robert Goddard and His Rockets cross section. The critical component, the one in which heat energy of the hot high-pressure steam from the boiler was converted into kinetic energy, was the nozzle from which the jet blew onto the wheel. De Laval found that the most efficient conversion occured when the nozzle first narrowed, increasing the speed of the jet to the speed of sound, and then expanded again. Above the speed of sound (but not below it! ) this expansion caused a further increase in the speed of the jet and led to a very efficient conversion of heat energy to motion.

Nowadays steam turbines are the preferred power source of electric power stations and large ships, although they usually have a different design--to make best use of the fast steam jet, De Laval's turbine had to run at an impractically high speed. But for rockets the De Laval nozzle was just what was needed. Goddard experimented on his ballistic pendulum with various nozzle designs, using a small metal combustion chamber filled with a type of gunpowder, ignited by electricity. The end of the chamber was threaded, so that nozzles of various designs could be screwed onto it and tested. Using a De Laval nozzle, he obtained jet velocities between 7000 and 8000 ft/sec and efficiencies of up to 63%. Later he replaced the ballistic pendulum with a more compact device, in which the thrust of the rockets did not lift a pendulum against gravity but compressed a calibrated spring. With that device he showed that (contrary to some popular claims) rockets worked just as well in a vacuum. As Goddard himself noted, that made the rocket the most efficient of all heat engines, better than piston-driven steam engines (21%) and Diesel engines (40%).

No wonder: from the second law of thermodynamics, the theoretically attainable efficiency of a heat engine increases with its operating temperature, and no other heat engine runs as hot as a rocket. A rocket engine at the Smithsonian, cut open to show convergent-diver- gent DeLaval nozzle. De Laval's nozzle turned spaceflight from a vague dream into a real possibility. Goddard communicated his results to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and asked for support to develop a rocket capable of probing the high atmosphere. His original plan (the "reloading feature" in his priority list) was to feed the combustion chamber with solid chunks of fuel, somewhat in the manner in which bullets were fed to a machine gun. In January 1917 the Smithsonian responded with a grant of $5000, and Goddard began his rocketry career. After the US entered World War I, Goddard also worked for a while on military rockets, but none of his designs were implemented, though rockets somewhat similar to his design were turned in World War II into an effective weapon against tanks, known as the bazooka (a variant of this is now known as "rocket propelled grenade" or RPG).

Note: The autobiographical book by Homer Hickam "October Sky" (anagram of its original title "Rocket Boys"; later made into a film) tells of a group of high-school students in a poor Appalachian coal-mining town who, taken by the idea of space flight, design and fly home-built rockets of greater and still greater range. Their break-through comes when they discover in a book the design of the De-Laval Nozzle. Liquid Fuel The idea of feeding the rocket with a continuous stream of solid charges also proved unfeasible, and in 1922 Goddard went back to his alternative idea, proposed independently by Hermann Oberth in Germany and also noted by Tsiolkovsky: a liquid-fuel rocket. It would have two lines running into its combustion chamber, one feeding fuel, the other oxygen, similar to the way a steel-cutting blowtorch operated, except here both lines carried liquids, not gases--in Goddard's design, gasoline and liquid oxygen. Such a rocket promised very high efficiency, but also posed serious technological challenges. Both fluids had to be pumped at a steady rate, and one of them, liquid oxygen, was extremely cold.

The high temperature of combustion in pure oxygen required heat-resistant materials, and to help overcome this, Goddard developed the technique of having the liquid oxygen cool the combustion chamber on its way from the fuel tank. This method is still use: in the picture on the right, the outer part of the nozzle is covered with a large number of metal pipes, through which the cold fuel flows on its way to the combustion chamber. Another completely novel problem which faced Goddard was the guidance and control of the rocket in flight. Robert H. Goddard besides The rocket is on top, recei- ving its fuel by two lines from the tank at the bottom. On March 16, 1926, Goddard flight-tested his first liquid-fuel rocket. He thought stable flight could be obtained by mounting the rocket ahead of the fuel tank, with the tank shielded from the flame by a metal cone and the lines for fuel and oxygen pulling it behind the rocket: the design worked, but did not produce the hoped-for stability. The rocket burned about 20 seconds before reaching sufficient thrust (or sufficiently lightening the fuel tank) for taking off. During that time it melted part of the nozzle, while the camera with which Mrs.

Esther Goddard was trying to record the flight ran out of film, so that no photographic record of that flight remains. Then it took off to a height of 41 feet, leveled off and later hit the ground, all within 2. 5 seconds, averaging about 60 mph. Goddard's concept seemed validated, but he was still far from a practical design. Unfortunately, he worked in isolation, without the engineering resources of a major institution. In the years that followed he continued developing his rockets--controlling their motion by gyroscopes, steering them with small vanes thrust into their exhaust jet, and building larger and faster rockets. These were tested in test stands on the ground and sometimes also in free flight, mostly at a rocket lab he established in Roswell, New Mexico. But the actual realization of his dream fell to others who enjoyed military or national support. Goddard, unfortunately, never lived to see the age of spaceflight. He died of cancer on August 10, 1945, in Baltimore. Exploring Further Another picture of Goddard , retrieving the remains of one of his rockets after a flight, with descriptive text.

Web site describing exhibits of Goddard's rockets at the National Air and Space Museum (part of the Smithsonian Institution) in Washington. Similar question: On the history of the De Laval Nozzle Historical Note The ballistic pendulum was apparently invented by a Benjamin Thompson, better known as Count Rumford, whose career started as a schoolteacher in Concord, New Hampshire; his life was studied by MIT physics professor Sanborn Brown. In the American Revolution, Thompson was actually a loyalist, a supporter of the British government who at age 20 became a major in the British militia. When the revolutionaries forced the British army out of Boston, Thompson went to Britain and served its government, both in politics and as scientific adviser. To evaluate the efficiency of gunpowder, he devised the ballistic pendulum, a heavy suspended target into which a small cannon was fired; from the rise of the target, the speed of the bullet was derived. He later entered the service of the duke of Bavaria, where he received a title of nobility "Count Rumford," Rumford being the old name of Concord.

Later he lived in France, while in England he founded the "Royal Institution" in London, a center for science research and popular lectures, the place where Humphrey Davy and Michael Faraday worked and lectured. He conducted many pioneering experiments and even invented the drip-method coffee maker. (For more, see "Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford" by Sanborn Brown, "The Physics Teacher", May 1976, p. 270-281, reprinted in a collection of history papers by the American Association of Physics Teachers.) Rocket History To Non-Java ALLSTAR Network Website Please let me remind all of you--this material is copyrighted. Though partially funded by NASA, it is still a private site. Therefore, before using our materials in any form, electronic or otherwise, you need to ask permission. There are two ways to browse the site: (1) use the search button above to find specific materials using keywords; or, (2) go to specific headings like history, principles or careers at specific levels above and click on the button. Teachers may go directly to the Teachers' Guide from the For Teachers button above or site browse as in (1) and (2).

Rocket History Today's rockets are remarkable collections of human ingenuity. NASA's Space Shuttle, for example, is one of the most complex flying machines ever invented. It stands upright on a launch pad, lifts off as a rocket, orbits Earth as a spacecraft, and returns to Earth as a gliding airplane. The Space Shuttle is a true spaceship. In a few years it will be joined by other spaceships. The European Space Agency is building the Hermes and Japan is building the HOPE. Still later may come aerospace planes that will take off from runways as airplanes, fly into space, and return as airplanes. The rockets and spaceships of today and the spaceships of the future have their roots in the science and technology of the past. They are natural outgrowths of literally thousands of years of experimentation and research on rockets and rocket propulsion. One of the first devices to successfully employ the principles essential to rocket flight was a wooden bird. In the writings of Aulus Gellius, a Roman, there is a story of a Greek named Archytas who lived in the city of Tarentum, now a part of southern Italy.

Somewhere around the year 400 B.C., Archytas mystified and amused the citizens of Tarentum by flying a pigeon made of wood. It appears that the bird was suspended on wires and propelled along by escaping steam. The pigeon used the action-reaction principle that was not to be stated as a scientific law until the 17th century. About three hundred years after the pigeon, another Greek, Hero of Alexandria, invented a similar rocket-like device called an aeolipile. It, too, used steam as a propulsive gas. Hero mounted a sphere on top of a water kettle. A fire below the kettle turned the water into steam, and the gas traveled through pipes to the sphere. Two L-shaped tubes on opposite sides of the sphere allowed the gas to escape, and in doing so gave a thrust to the sphere that caused it to rotate. Just when the first true rockets appeared is unclear. Stories of early rocket like devices appear sporadically through the historical records of various cultures. Perhaps the first true rockets were accidents. In the first century A.D., the Chinese were reported to have had a simple form of gunpowder made from saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal dust.

It was used mostly for fireworks in religious and other festive celebrations. Bamboo tubes were filled with the mixture and tossed into fires to create explosions during religious festivals. lt is entirely possible that some of those tubes failed to explode and instead skittered out of the fires, propelled by the gases and sparks produced by the burning gunpowder. It is certain that the Chinese began to experiment with the gunpowder-filled tubes. At some point, bamboo tubes were attached to arrows and launched with bows. Soon it was discovered that these gunpowder tubes could launch themselves just by the power produced from the escaping gas. The true rocket was born. The first date we know true rockets were used was the year 1232. At this time, the Chinese and the Mongols were at war with each other. During the battle of Kai-Keng, the Chinese repelled the Mongol invaders by a barrage of "arrows of flying fire." These fire-arrows were a simple form of a solid-propellant rocket. A tube, capped at one end, was filled with gunpowder. The other end was left open and the tube was attached to a long stick.

When the powder was ignited, the rapid burning of the powder produced fire, smoke, and gas that escaped out the open end and produced a thrust. The stick acted as a simple guidance system that kept the rocket headed in one general direction as it flew through the air. It is not clear how effective these arrows of flying fire were as weapons of destruction, but their psychological effects on the Mongols must have been formidable. Following the battle of Kai-Keng, the Mongols produced rockets of their own and may have been responsible for the spread of rockets to Europe. All through the 13th to the 15th centuries there were reports of many rocket experiments. In England, a monk named Roger Bacon worked on improved forms of gunpowder that greatly increased the range of rockets. In France, Jean Froissart found that more accurate flights could be achieved by launching rockets through tubes. Froissart's idea was the forerunner of the modern bazooka. Joanes de Fontana of Italy designed a surface-running rocket-powered torpedo for setting enemy ships on fire.

By the 16th century rockets fell into a time of disuse as weapons of war, though they were still used for fireworks displays, and a German fireworks maker, Johann Schmidlap, invented the "step rocket," a multi-staged vehicle for lifting fireworks to higher altitudes. A large sky rocket (first stage) carried a smaller sky rocket (second stage). When the large rocket burned out, the smaller one continued to a higher altitude before showering the sky with glowing cinders. Schmidlap's idea is basic to all rockets today that go into outer space. Nearly all uses of rockets up to this time were for warfare or fireworks, but there is an interesting old Chinese legend that reported the use of rockets as a means of transportation. With the help of many assistants, a lesser-known Chinese official named Wan-Hu assembled a rocket- powered flying chair. Attached to the chair were two large kites, and fixed to the kites were forty- seven fire-arrow rockets. On the day of the flight, Wan-Hu sat himself on the chair and gave the command to light the rockets. Forty-seven rocket assistants, each armed with torches, rushed forward to light the fuses.

In a moment, there was a tremendous roar accompanied by billowing clouds of smoke. When the smoke cleared, Wan-Hu and his flying chair were gone. No one knows for sure what happened to Wan-Hu, but it is probable that if the event really did take place, Wan-Hu and his chair were blown to pieces. Fire-arrows were as apt to explode as to fly. Rocketry Becomes a Science During the latter part of the 17th century, the scientific foundations for modern rocketry were laid by the great English scientist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). Newton organized his understanding of physical motion into three scientific laws. The laws explain how rockets work and why they are able to work in the vacuum of outer space. Newton's laws soon began to have a practical impact on the design of rockets. About 1720, a Dutch professor, Willem Gravesande, built model cars propelled by jets of steam. Rocket experimenters in Germany and Russia began working with rockets with a mass of more than 45 kilograms. Some of these rockets were so powerful that their escaping exhaust flames bored deep holes in the ground even before lift-off.

During the end of the 18th century and early into the 19th, rockets experienced a brief revival as a weapon of war. The success of Indian rocket barrages against the British in 1792 and again in 1799 caught the interest of an artillery expert, Colonel William Congreve. Congreve set out to design rockets for use by the British military. The Congreve rockets were highly successful in battle. Used by British ships to pound Fort McHenry in the War of 1812, they inspired Francis Scott Key to write "the rockets' red glare," words in his poem that later became The Star- Spangled Banner. Even with Congreve's work, the accuracy of rockets still had not improved much from the early days. The devastating nature of war rockets was not their accuracy or power, but their numbers. During a typical siege, thousands of them might be fired at the enemy. All over the world, rocket researchers experimented with ways to improve accuracy. An Englishman, William Hale, developed a technique called spin stabilization. In this method, the escaping exhaust gases struck small vanes at the bottom of the rocket, causing it to spin much as a bullet does in flight.

Variations of the principle are still used today. Rockets continued to be used with success in battles all over the European continent. However, in a war with Prussia, the Austrian rocket brigades met their match against newly designed artillery pieces. Breech-loading cannon with rifled barrels and exploding warheads were far more effective weapons of war than the best rockets. Once again, rockets were relegated to peacetime uses. Modern Rocketry Begins In 1898, a Russian schoolteacher, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857-1935), proposed the idea of space exploration by rocket. In a report he published in 1903, Tsiolkovsky suggested the use of liquid propellants for rockets in order to achieve greater range. Tsiolkovsky stated that the speed and range of a rocket were limited only by the exhaust velocity of escaping gases. For his ideas, careful research, and great vision, Tsiolkovsky has been called the father of modern astronautics. Early in the 20th century, an American, Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945), conducted practical experiments in rocketry.

He had become interested in a way of achieving higher altitudes than were possible for lighter-than-air balloons. He published a pamphlet in 1919 entitled A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. It was a mathematical analysis of what is today called the meteorological sounding rocket. In his pamphlet, Goddard reached several conclusions important to rocketry. From his tests, he stated that a rocket operates with greater efficiency in a vacuum than in air. At the time, most people mistakenly believed that air was needed for a rocket to push against and a New York Times newspaper editorial of the day mocked Goddard's lack of the "basic physics ladled out daily in our high schools." Goddard also stated that multistage or step rockets were the answer to achieving high altitudes and that the velocity needed to escape Earth's gravity could be achieved in this way. Goddard's earliest experiments were with solid-propellant rockets. In 1915, he began to try various types of solid fuels and to measure the exhaust velocities of the burning gases. While working on solid-propellant rockets, Goddard became convinced that a rocket could be propelled better by liquid fuel. No one had ever built a successful liquid-propellant rocket before.

It was a much more difficult task than building solid- propellant rockets. Fuel and oxygen tanks, turbines, and combustion chambers would be needed. In spite of the difficulties, Goddard achieved the first successful flight with a liquid- propellant rocket on March 16, 1926. Fueled by liquid oxygen and gasoline, the rocket flew for only two and a half seconds, climbed 12.5 meters, and landed 56 meters away in a cabbage patch. By today's standards, the flight was unimpressive, but like the first powered airplane flight by the Wright brothers in 1903, Goddard's gasoline rocket was the forerunner of a whole new era in rocket flight. Goddard's experiments in liquid-propellant rockets continued for many years. His rockets became bigger and flew higher. He developed a gyroscope system for flight control and a payload compartment for scientific instruments. Parachute recovery systems were employed to return rockets and instruments safely. Goddard, for his achievements, has been called the father of modern rocketry.

A third great space pioneer, Hermann Oberth (1894-1989) of Germany, published a book in 1923 about rocket travel into outer space. His writings were important. Because of them, many small rocket societies sprang up around the world. In Germany, the formation of one such society, the Verein fur Raumschiffahrt (Society for Space Travel), led to the development of the V-2 rocket, which was used against London during World War II. In 1937, German engineers and scientists, including Oberth, assembled in Peenemunde on the shores of the Baltic Sea. There the most advanced rocket of its time would be built and flown under the directorship of Wernher von Braun. The V-2 rocket (in Germany called the A-4) was small by comparison to today's rockets. It achieved its great thrust by burning a mixture of liquid oxygen and alcohol at a rate of about one ton every seven seconds. Once launched, the V-2 was a formidable weapon that could devastate whole city blocks. Fortunately for London and the Allied forces, the V-2 came too late in the war to change its outcome.

Nevertheless, by war's end, German rocket scientists and engineers had already laid plans for advanced missiles capable of spanning the Atlantic Ocean and landing in the United States. These missiles would have had winged upper stages but very small payload capacities. With the fall of Germany, many unused V-2 rockets and components were captured by the Allies. Many German rocket scientists came to the United States. Others went to the Soviet Union. The German scientists, including Wernher von Braun, were amazed at the progress Goddard had made. Both the United States and the Soviet Union realized the potential of rocketry as a military weapon and began a variety of experimental programs. At first, the United States began a program with high-altitude atmospheric sounding rockets, one of Goddard's early ideas. Later, a variety of medium- and long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles were developed. These became the starting point of the U.S. space program. Missiles such as the Redstone, Atlas, and Titan would eventually launch astronauts into space. On October 4, 1957, the world was stunned by the news of an Earth-orbiting artificial satellite launched by the Soviet Union.

Called Sputnik I, the satellite was the first successful entry in a race for space between the two superpower nations. Less than a month later, the Soviets followed with the launch of a satellite carrying a dog named Laika on board. Laika survived in space for seven days before being put to sleep before the oxygen supply ran out. A few months after the first Sputnik, the United States followed the Soviet Union with a satellite of its own. Explorer I was launched by the U.S. Army on January 31, 1958. In October of that year, the United States formally organized its space program by creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA became a civilian agency with the goal of peaceful exploration of space for the benefit of all humankind. Soon, many people and machines were being launched into space. Astronauts orbited Earth and landed on the Moon. Robot spacecraft traveled to the planets. Space was suddenly opened up to exploration and commercial exploitation. Satellites enabled scientists to investigate our world, forecast the weather, and to communicate instantaneously around the globe. As the demand for more and larger payloads increased, a wide array of powerful and versatile rockets had to be built.

Since the earliest days of discovery and experimentation, rockets have evolved from simple gunpowder devices into giant vehicles capable of traveling into outer space. Rockets have opened the universe to direct exploration by humankind. Send all comments to � 1995-2017 ALLSTAR Network. All rights reserved worldwide. Funded in part by Invention: Rocket (Creative Commons) Main Image: Of the many inventions in Science, rocket invention tops the list. Robert Goddard launched the world's first liquid fueled rocket in Auburn,Massachusetts. It takes a rocket 8 mins to reach a speed of 15,000mph. Before Goddard most of the rockets used solid fuel to propel the rockets. The combustion gases in a solid rocket motor are at a temperature of 6,100 degrees Fahrenheit, which is two thirds the temperature on the surface of the sun. Who invented the Rocket? The timeline of Rocket invention. The liquid fuel rocket was invented by Robert Goddard . It took its first flight on March 16, 1926. Goddard developed two of the main designs which are regarded as milestones in space flight.

One was the multi-stage rocket and the second one, liquid fuel rocket design. History of Rocket Rocket innovation dates back to as early as 1200 AD. It was used in China for warfare against the Mongols. But rockets were mainly used in warfare and in fireworks. It wasn't until the 20th century that rockets were being experimented for spaceflight. One of the main pioneers in space flight is a Russian mathematician, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. In his earliest manuscripts , Astronomical Drawings" he wrote about the solar system and ways of motion in free space and zero gravity . Tsiolkovsky drew the primitive design of a true Space Craft, which moved in outer space with the help of reactive forces. He designed the space rocket model. He never actually built a rocket but this model he designed was a three level rocket with a control room, decompression chamber, oxygen tanks and water filled "bathtubs" to alleviate the G-loads of launch and re-entry. On the third level he installed the machinery with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen tanks and steering rudders through the exhaust at the bottom.

He published "the Space train rockets" in 1929 which was about multi-stage rockets in which he mentions that multi stage rockets is the only way to reach escape velocity and fly into orbit. His work had the mathematical formulas for space travel, space suits and even space showers for the astronauts. He suggested that liquid hydrogen and oxygen will be required to travel to space. But his work did not get any credence and was mostly ignored at that time until later when he was given the recognition in Soviet as the inventor of rocket. But Robert Goddard is credited with the liquid fuel rockets which he came up with in the 1920s. Jerome Hunsaker a rocket scientist wrote,"Every liquid-filled rocket that flies is a Goddard rocket". He is today credited as the Father of Space age. Goddard considered October 19th as the Anniversary Day"of his greatest inspiration. He climbed up a cherry tree to cut off some dead branches.

And as he stood there and looked at the sky he later wrote, "as I looked toward the fields at the east, I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars , and how it would look on a small scale, if sent up from the meadow at my feet. I have several photographs of the tree, taken since, with the little ladder I made to climb it, leaning against it". He got dedicated to developing a rocket after his inspiring day on October 19th. He was ridiculed as the moon-rocket man by a local newspaper. He did not take too much interest in his schoolwork. But later on Charles Lindenbergh took interest in his work and coninced Daniel Gugenheim to give im a $50,000 grant. The Grant helped him to relcate to Roswell in New Mexico to conduct his experiments. It is here that he made a lot of progress in developing a gyroscope stabilizing device to get his rocket in a straight path into the air and also fitted it with a parachute recovery system which is used to this day. But his work was not taken seriously by the US military.

On a parallel note Wernher von Braun from Germany was put in charge of rocket experimentation and he developed the "A series" rocket engines. His work was similar to Goddard's. How does a Rocket work? A rocket is a chamber of gas enclosed under pressure. When a small opening is prvided at one end of the chamber the gas escapes providing a thrust for the chamber to propel in the opposite direction. This is typically how a rocket works. In space rockets the gas is produced by a combination of liquid fuels. The 3laws of Newton are used to make precise calculations on the rockets movement. Newtons First law which states, that a body continues to be in a state of rest or motion until it is acted by an unbalanced force. A rocket blasting off the launch pad changes from a state of rest to a state of motion. In rocket flight, forces become balanced and unbalanced all the time. If a rocket is in a state of rest it takes an unbalanced force to put in motion and if it is in a state of motion it is an unbalanced force that will make it stop or come to a state of rest or change its path. Newtons Second law is force times mass equals acceleration or Force= mass * acceleration.

F = m* a, here the m is the mass of the rocket , force is the explosion of gases inside the rockets engine. It is this pressure that accelerates the gases one way and the rocket in the opposite way. But as the rocket keeps going up the mass of the rocket changes as it is using up the propellants to fire the engine. So it becomes smaller in mass which means the acceleration has to increase according to Newtons second law. This is why a rocket speed is lesser when it starts off and keeps increasing as it goes up. According to Newton's Third law ," Every action has an equal and opposite reaction". A rocket lifts off from a launch pad only when it expels gas out of its engine. The gas pushes the rocket in the upward direction as it escapes in the opposite direction that is downward. The thrust that the gas provides for the rocket must be greater than the weight of the rocket for it to propel upwards. While it is on the pad the weight of the rocket is balanced by the force of the ground pushing it. But when the thrust gets more than the rockets weight there is an unbalanced force which makes the rocket lift off.

Uses or Applications of Rockets They are used to carry spacecrafts, telescopes (Hubble),probes and satellites into space. They are used for both military and civilian causes such as missiles and carrying communications satellites . The History of Early Fireworks, Rockets and Weapons of War By Mary Bellis Updated August 05, 2016. Today's rockets are remarkable collections of human ingenuity that have their roots in the science and technology of the past. They’re natural outgrowths of literally thousands of years of experimentation and research on rockets and rocket propulsion. 1. The Wooden Bird One of the first devices to successfully employ the principles of rocket flight was a wooden bird. A Greek named Archytas lived in the city of Tarentum, now a part of southern Italy, sometime around 400 B.C. Archytas mystified and amused the citizens of Tarentum by flying a pigeon made of wood. Escaping steam propelled the bird as it was suspended on wires. The pigeon used the action-reaction principle, which was not stated as a scientific law until the 17th century. 2.

The Aeolipile Hero of Alexandria, another Greek, invented a similar rocket-like device called an aeolipile about three hundred years after Archytas’ pigeon. It, too, used steam as a propulsive gas. Hero mounted a sphere on top of a water kettle. A fire below the kettle turned the water into steam, and the gas traveled through pipes to the sphere. Two L-shaped tubes on opposite sides of the sphere allowed the gas to escape and gave a thrust to the sphere that caused it to rotate. 3. Early Chinese Rockets The Chinese reportedly had a simple form of gunpowder made from saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal dust in the first century A.D. They filled bamboo tubes with the mixture and tossed them into fires to create explosions during religious festivals. Some of those tubes most likely failed to explode and instead skittered out of the flames, propelled by the gases and sparks produced by the burning gunpowder. The Chinese then began experimenting with the gunpowder-filled tubes. They attached bamboo tubes to arrows and launched them with bows at some point. Soon they discovered that these gunpowder tubes could launch themselves just by the power produced from the escaping gas. The first true rocket was born. 4.

The Battle of Kai-Keng The first use of true rockets as weapons is reported as occurring in 1232. The Chinese and the Mongols were at war with each other, and the Chinese repelled the Mongol invaders with a barrage of "arrows of flying fire" during the battle of Kai-Keng. These fire arrows were a simple form of solid-propellant rocket. A tube, capped at one end, contained gunpowder. The other end was left open and the tube was attached to a long stick. When the powder was ignited, the rapid burning of the powder produced fire, smoke and gas that escaped out the open end, producing a thrust. The stick acted as a simple guidance system that kept the rocket headed in one general direction as it flew through the air. It’s not clear how effective these arrows of flying fire were as weapons of destruction, but their psychological effects on the Mongols must have been formidable. 5. The 14th and 15th Centuries The Mongols produced rockets of their own following the Battle of Kai-Keng and may have been responsible for the spread of rockets to Europe. There were reports of many rocket experiments during the 13th through 15th centuries.

In England, a monk named Roger Bacon worked on improved forms of gunpowder that greatly increased the range of rockets. In France, Jean Froissart found that more accurate flights could be achieved by launching rockets through tubes. Froissart's idea was the forerunner of the modern bazooka. Joanes de Fontana of Italy designed a surface-running rocket-powered torpedo for setting enemy ships on fire. 6. The 16th Century Rockets fell into disfavor as weapons of war by the 16th century, although they were still used for fireworks displays. Johann Schmidlap, a German fireworks maker, invented the "step rocket," a multi-staged vehicle for lifting fireworks to higher altitudes. A large first-stage sky rocket carried a smaller second-stage sky rocket. When the large rocket burned out, the smaller one continued to a higher altitude before showering the sky with glowing cinders. Schmidlap's idea is basic to all rockets that go into outer space today. 7. The First Rocket Used for Transportation A lesser-known Chinese official named Wan-Hu introduced rockets as a means of transportation.

He assembled a rocket-powered flying chair with the help of many assistants, attaching two large kites to the chair and 47 fire-arrow rockets to the kites. Wan-Hu sat on the chair on the day of the flight and gave the command to light the rockets. Forty-seven rocket assistants, each armed with his own torch, rushed forward to light the fuses. There was a tremendous roar accompanied by billowing clouds of smoke. When the smoke cleared, Wan-Hu and his flying chair were gone. No one knows for sure what happened to Wan-Hu, but it's probable that he and his chair were blown to pieces because fire-arrows were as apt to explode as to fly. 8. The Influence of Sir Isaac Newton The scientific foundation for modern space travel was laid out by the great English scientist Sir Isaac Newton during the latter part of the 17th century. Newton organized his understanding of physical motion into three scientific laws that explained how rockets worked and why they are able to do so in the vacuum of outer space. Newton's laws soon began to have a practical impact on the design of rockets. 9.

The 18th Century Experimenters and scientists in Germany and Russia began working with rockets with masses of more than 45 kilograms in the 18th century. Some were so powerful, their escaping exhaust flames bored deep holes into the ground before lift-off. Rockets experienced a brief revival as weapons of war during the end of the 18th century and early into the 19th century. The success of Indian rocket barrages against the British in 1792 and again in 1799 caught the interest of artillery expert Colonel William Congreve, who set out to design rockets for use by the British military. The Congreve rockets were highly successful in battle. Used by British ships to pound Fort McHenry in the War of 1812, they inspired Francis Scott Key to write of "the rockets' red glare" in his poem that would later become the Star-Spangled Banner. Even with Congreve's work, however, scientists had not improved the accuracy of rockets much from early days. The devastating nature of war rockets was not their accuracy or power but their numbers. During a typical siege, thousands might be fired at the enemy. Researchers began experimenting with ways to improve accuracy.

William Hale, an English scientist, developed a technique called spin stabilization. The escaping exhaust gases struck small vanes at the bottom of the rocket, causing it to spin much as a bullet does in flight. Variations of this principle are still used today. Rockets continued to be used with success in battles all over the European continent. The Austrian rocket brigades met their match against newly designed artillery pieces in a war with Prussia, however. Breech-loading cannons with rifled barrels and exploding warheads were far more effective weapons of war than the best rockets. Once again, rockets were relegated to peacetime uses. 10. Modern Rocketry Begins Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a Russian schoolteacher and scientist, first proposed the idea of space exploration in 1898. In 1903, Tsiolkovsky suggested the use of liquid propellants for rockets to achieve greater range. He stated that the speed and range of a rocket were limited only by the exhaust velocity of escaping gases. Tsiolkovsky has been called the father of modern astronautics for his ideas, careful research and great vision. Robert H.

Goddard , an American scientist, conducted practical experiments in rocketry early in the 20th century. He had become interested in achieving higher altitudes than were possible for lighter-than-air balloons and published a pamphlet in 1919, A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes. It was a mathematical analysis of what is called the meteorological sounding rocket today. Goddard's earliest experiments were with solid-propellant rockets . He began to try various types of solid fuels and to measure the exhaust velocities of the burning gases in 1915. He became convinced that a rocket could be propelled better by liquid fuel. No one had ever built a successful liquid-propellant rocket before. It was a much more difficult undertaking than solid-propellant rockets, requiring fuel and oxygen tanks, turbines and combustion chambers. Goddard achieved the first successful flight with a liquid-propellant rocket on March 16, 1926. Fueled by liquid oxygen and gasoline, his rocket flew for only two and a half seconds, but it climbed 12.5 meters and landed 56 meters away in a cabbage patch.

The flight was unimpressive by today's standards, but Goddard's gasoline rocket was the forerunner of a whole new era in rocket flight. His experiments in liquid-propellant rockets continued for many years. His rockets became bigger and flew higher. He developed a gyroscope system for flight control and a payload compartment for scientific instruments. Parachute recovery systems were employed to return rockets and instruments safely. Goddard has been called the father of modern rocketry for his achievements. 11. The V-2 Rocket A third great space pioneer, Hermann Oberth of Germany, published a book in 1923 about travel into outer space. Many small rocket societies sprang up around the world because of his writings. The formation of one such society in Germany, the Verein fur Raumschiffahrt or Society for Space Travel, led to the development of the V-2 rocket used against London in World War II. German engineers and scientists, including Oberth, gathered in Peenemunde on the shores of the Baltic Sea in 1937 where the most advanced rocket of its time was built and flown under the directorship of Wernher von Braun.

The V-2 rocket, called the A-4 in Germany, was small in comparison to today's designs. It achieved its great thrust by burning a mixture of liquid oxygen and alcohol at a rate of about one ton every seven seconds. The V-2 was a formidable weapon that could devastate whole city blocks. Fortunately for London and the Allied forces, the V-2 came too late in the war to change its outcome. Nevertheless, Germany's rocket scientists and engineers had already laid plans for advanced missiles capable of spanning the Atlantic Ocean and landing in the U.S. These missiles would have had winged upper stages but very small payload capacities. Many unused V-2s and components were captured by the Allies with the fall of Germany, and many German rocket scientists came to the U.S. while others went to the Soviet Union. Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union realized the potential of rocketry as a military weapon and began a variety of experimental programs. The U.S. began a program with high-altitude atmospheric sounding rockets, one of Goddard's early ideas. A variety of medium- and long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles were developed later. These became the starting point of the U.S. space program.

Missiles such as the Redstone, Atlas and Titan would eventually launch astronauts into space. 12. The Race for Space The world was stunned by the news of an earth-orbiting artificial satellite launched by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957. Called Sputnik 1, the satellite was the first successful entry in a race for space between two superpower nations, the Soviet Union and the U.S. The Soviets followed with the launch of a satellite carrying a dog named Laika on board less than a month later. Laika survived in space for seven days before being put to sleep before her oxygen supply ran out. The U.S. followed the Soviet Union with a satellite of its own a few months after the first Sputnik. Explorer I was launched by the U.S. Army on January 31, 1958. In October of that year, the U.S. formally organized its space program by creating NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA became a civilian agency with the goal of peaceful exploration of space for the benefit of all humankind. Suddenly, many people and machines were being launched into space. Astronauts orbited earth and landed on the moon.

Robot spacecraft traveled to planets. Space was suddenly opened up to exploration and commercial exploitation. Satellites enabled scientists to investigate our world, forecast the weather and communicate instantaneously around the globe. A wide array of powerful and versatile rockets had to be built as the demand for more and larger payloads increased. Rockets Today Rockets have evolved from simple gunpowder devices into giant vehicles capable of traveling into outer space since the earliest days of discovery and experimentation. They've opened the universe to direct exploration by humankind. NASA - Robert Goddard: A Man and His Rocket Robert Goddard: A Man and His Rocket 03.09.04 On March 16, 1926, Robert Goddard successfully launched the first liquid-fueled rocket in Auburn, Mass. The first-of-its-kind rocket reached an altitude of 41 feet, lasted 2 seconds and averaged about 60 miles per hour. Goddard wrote in his autobiography about an inspiration that came to him as a boy while up in a cherry tree pruning branches: "I imagined how wonderful it would be to make some device which had even the possibility of ascending to Mars.

I was a different boy when I descended the tree from when I ascended, for existence at last seemed very purposive." Image to right shows Dr. Robert H. Goddard (1882-1945) and his earlier rockets. He was the first scientist to realize the potential of missiles and space flight and contributed in bringing them to realization. Credit: NASA In 1907, while a student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, Goddard experimented on a rocket powered by gunpowder in the basement of the physics building. Clouds of smoke caused a lot of commotion and the faculty, rather than expel him, took an interest in his work. By 1914, Goddard already had received two U.S. patents: one for a rocket using liquid fuel and the other for a two- or three-stage rocket using solid fuel. Until that time, propulsion was provided by various types of gunpowder. Goddard began teaching physics in 1914 at Clark University in Worcester and was named director of the Physical Laboratory in 1923.

His thoughts on space flight started to emerge in 1915, when he theorized that a rocket would work in a vacuum, and didn't need to push against air in order to fly. This meant that in the vacuum of space, rocket engines would be able to produce thrust. Goddard's discoveries were given little attention by the U.S. government. A modest man, Goddard paid for the rocket experiments from his own paycheck. Funding from the Smithsonian Institution allowed Goddard to continue his rocket research and develop the mathematical theories of rocket propulsion. In 1920, the Smithsonian published his original paper, "A Method for Reaching Extreme Altitudes," in which he included a small section stressing that rockets could be used to send payloads to the Moon. Unfortunately, the press got wind of this and the next day, the New York Times wrote a scathing editorial denouncing his theories as folly. Goddard was ridiculed and made to look like a fool.

He responded to a reporter's question by stating, "Every vision is a joke until the first man accomplishes it; once realized, it becomes commonplace." In 1930, Goddard and a small crew of workers moved to New Mexico to continue his research in seclusion. Goddard died on Aug. 10, 1945, holding 214 patents in rocketry but having received little attention for his propulsion research. Image to left shows a launch in New Mexico. By the mid 1930s, Goddard's rockets had broken the sound barrier at 741 mph and flown to heights of up to 1.7 miles. Credit: NASA When American rocket scientists began to earnestly prepare for space exploration, they discovered it was almost impossible to build a rocket or launch a satellite without acknowledging the work of Goddard. Now known as the father of modern rocketry, Goddard's significant achievements in rocket propulsion have contributed immensely to the scientific exploration of space. Goddard didn't live to see the age of space flight, but his foundation of rocket research became the fundamental principles of rocket propulsion.

A day after Apollo 11 set off for the Moon, in July of 1969, the New York Times printed a correction to its 1920 editorial section, stating that "it is now definitely established that a rocket can function in a vacuum as well as in an atmosphere. The Times regrets the error." NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., a major space science laboratory, was named in his honor. For further information, visit:

Question: Who invented the liquid fuel powered rocket?
Answer: Robert H. Goddard